Du slashes minimum price for BlackBerry plan in UAE

Dh50 buys subscribers 100mb of data, including email and social networking package

By

Joseph George

PublishedWednesday, December 26, 2012

UAE telecom provider du has reduced its minimum price for a BlackBerry plan (which includes emails) to Dh50 per month even as sales of new handsets drop to a new low in the United Arab Emirates and across the world.

By paying Dh50 subscribers can now avail of 100mb of data, which would also include access to email service apart from its regular social networking package, which includes instant messaging.

The lowest BlackBerry package being offered by du was the Dh30 plan (or Dh1.5 per day), which only offered the social networking plan.

Alternately, etisalat’s lowest BlackBerry plan offers unlimited local browsing and access to social networking for Dh49. But the plan does not include access to email. Users will have to shell out Dh79 for additional access to an email.

Meanwhile, sales of new BlackBerry handsets across the UAE have dropped significantly. A source aware of sales by various outlets told Emirates24|7 that only a small number of BlackBerry units were sold during the past three months.

“The sales have significantly dropped. In fact in a few stores the numbers are shocking. Many who want to change their old BlackBerry handsets are also waiting for new the new BB10 models to arrive,” he said.

RIM’s share of the market has nosedived from 19 per cent of the market to 8 per cent. In the US, it just constitutes for 2 per cent of sales.

RIM has lost significant market share across the world. While sales in the United States, Britain and Canada dropped by 53 per cent, revenues from the rest of the world dropped 44 per cent last quarter compared to the same period last year.

The company is now pinning its hopes on its forthcoming BB10 devices, set to be unveiled on January 30, and available in the UAE market during the first quarter of 2013.

Meanwhile, different models of BB10 units are being named as the X10 and Z10.

The Z10, which used to be known as BB London is expected to come with a 4.2-inch display with 1280 x 768 pixels resolution, a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor apart from an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera.